A BIT MORE CIVILITY, PLEASE-AND SURELY

Jon MargolisCHICAGO TRIBUNE

A block away from the Superdome, just outside the chain-link fence the security folks had put up, a lone sentinel stood the other night beneath a hand-lettered sign proclaiming ''God is a Republican.''

Nobody paid the fellow any mind, though some must have been tempted to ask him how he knew, or what emboldened him to be so blasphemous as to associate God with either political party.

Alas for the Republican Party, inside the Superdome some of the speakers were displaying similar sentiments, which might very well be a mistake this year. They were just a touch more subtle about it, but there was an undertone to several of last week`s speeches which indicated that several Republicans are convinced that if God is not a registered Republican, at least the devil must be a Democrat.

Forgetting for a moment the problem of Manichaeanist heresy involved here, these Republicans seem uncomfortably reminiscent of their predecessors in the early 1950s who implied, if they did not directly charge, that their opponents were not simply misguided but doing the will of the Kremlin. There are times when the political mood is receptive to such extremism. This is not one of those times.

There is neither a Red Menace nor the liberal hysteria of the 1960s, which associated conservatism with the Nazis. Nor is there even the conservative intensity of 1980, when Ronald Reagan`s true believers marched into Detroit eager to battle the liberal infidels. Things are calmer, now, and a little civility is in order.

To be charitable, conventions always bring out the worst in politicians, whose rhetoric in the best of times tends to overstatement. No sane person can expect (though he might hope for) intellectual honesty in political discourse, and speakers at both conventions were a bit silly.

But the Democrats, even in their foolishness, claimed only that George Bush and his supporters were empty-headed, unenlightened ninnies, too fond of the privileged and indifferent to everybody else. While not exactly objective analysis, this is part of the game.

The Republicans claimed that Michael Dukakis and his supporters are empty-headed, unenlightened ninnies who want to raise your taxes, also par for the course. Several of them also pointed out that Dukakis is not a tall fellow, which is probably no worse than pointing out that Bush is sometimes an awkward fellow, though they might keep in mind that there are lots of short folks, and they vote.

The problem comes when Republicans imply that those who disagree with them are not simply wrong but are somehow unpatriotic or lacking in virtue. Even Bush himself, usually an honorable campaigner, was tempted to argue that Dukakis ''sees a long, slow decline for our country, an inevitable fall mandated by impersonal historical forces,'' and that he sees America as only

''another pleasant country on the UN roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe.''

No, he doesn`t. There is a professor at Yale, Bush`s alma mater, who has written a book which, according to the reviews (such books are read only by reviewers and other professors), argues that the country is in decline, and there may be a few professors, and perhaps even a few Democrats, who discount American exceptionalism.

But Michael Dukakis is not one of them. He waxes poetic (even waxes sloppy) about ''the American Dream,'' which he called ''as strong and as vibrant today as it has ever been.''

Then there was Arizona Sen. John McCain, who a week or so before the convention began was implying that anyone who opposed deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative was indifferent to national strength, and who said at the podium here that Dukakis had ''vetoed legislation giving Massachusetts schoolchildren to right to pledge allegiance to (the) flag at the beginning of the school day.''

This is false, and because McCain is not a fool, he probably knows that. The bill Dukakis vetoed, after his attorney general told him it was unconstitutional, would have required teachers to start each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. That`s far different from giving children the right to say the pledge, which they have.

There are enough things in Dukakis` record to criticize without distorting them, and enough liberal policies which are dumb enough to deserve opprobrium without challenging anyone`s virtue or good faith.

Whose side, if anyone`s, God is on will not be known for some time, if ever. Politicians who claim that He is only for them risk convincing the voters not to be.